Hough Tractors

Hough Loader Legacy
Frank G. Hough's front-end loader innovations are still on the job today.
Jim Robinson’s (Derby, Conn.) well-preserved and fully functional HE Payloader dating to the early 1950s. The simple curves in the loader arms increased wheel clearance, allowed for larger carry loads and improved the bank-digging capabilities of the machine.
Front-end loaders are so commonplace that they blend into the mechanical landscape at construction sites. Most farms, many estates and even some suburban homes are equipped with at least one. This ever-practical tool is designed principally for loading bulk materials and excavation, but it gets used for everything from hoisting engines out of pickup trucks to scraping away sod for a new flowerbed.
Who built the first tractor loader is anybody's guess, but it was likely the result of an enterprising farmer's desire to find an easier way to load manure. Some primitive tractor-mounted loaders used winches to raise and lower the bucket, while others employed more tenuous gear-driven mechanical linkages. Frank G. Hough (pronounced Huff), a young engineer in Chicago, believed in the potential of hydraulics and pioneered a much better way in the early 1920s. With his initial invention, Hough excavated the footings for a material-moving legacy whose contributions included the first production wheel-tractor-mounted front-end loader, first integrated wheel loader, first four-wheel drive loader and the largest mechanically driven loader, among many others.